Calgary Catholic Bishop Fred Henry really doesn’t care what people think and doesn’t worry how naysayers slime him for his opposition to having local Catholic schools allow vaccinations against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

He admits the provincial authorities feel he’s a pain, but they don’t have the intestines to drop the gloves.

He speaks of Tory politicos including former health minister Ron Liepert who slammed the bishop on this issue to no avail a few years back.

“He just shoots from the lip. He’s gone, thanks be to God,” says the bishop, who has been attacked by Ralph Klein and Conrad Black and been taken to the Human Rights Commission for his stand against same-sex marriage.

He especially doesn’t go for those who bring up how, since Catholic schools are tax-funded, they should toe some party line from outside.

“Take a deep breath. We’re also taxpayers. We’re not riding on your dollar. We pay taxes as much as anybody else does,” says Henry.

“We have parental rights. We have a constitutionally guaranteed right to educate and we’re going to do that. If you don’t like us, tough. I’m not apologizing.

“We’re different. We will be counter-cultural. We will not be trendy. We will stand for certain things on principle. If you can’t deal with that, well, too bad. I’m going to do my job, no matter what, and if that means being persecuted and called all kinds of nasty names, so be it.”

Speaking to the bishop is a far cry from the scribbler’s routine wading through a political world of spin, mush and doublespeak. The leader of southern Alberta’s Catholics says parents of kids in Catholic schools have options — the family doc, numerous clinics students get info on and, he says, “they can change to the public system.”

He says there’s nothing morally wrong with a Catholic child getting the vaccination, but it is morally wrong for a Catholic institution to make it happen.

He thinks it’s very similar to gambling. An individual person can gamble as long as they’re doing so responsibly, but a Catholic agency or institution can’t take advantage of the proceeds of gambling.

For Henry, who has the backing of Alberta’s Catholic bishops but not all Catholic school boards in the province, this battle is “a clash of the forces of secularism and religious freedom” and this issue is “one of the lines in the sand we draw because this is who we are.”

The bishop says it is society who should change its ways about sexuality away from a scene “where we’ve enshrined pleasure as the ultimate goal and anything goes.”

It is here Henry mentions same-sex relationships and “strange behaviours that would never have been suggested as being normative 10 years ago.”

Henry says the HPV vaccine fight is big.

“Unless we do something like this the situation is just simply going to continue,” he says.

“The next vaccine that’s going to come along is the HIV vaccine and all of a sudden somebody is going to say: Oh, isn’t this wonderful. Here we have another vaccine and this is going to protect us from the HIV virus.

“Wait a minute. Wake up. Let’s talk about sexuality. A year ago Alberta Health talked about an epidemic in sexually transmitted diseases and everybody said we’ve got to do something. Yes, we have to do something, but the answer is not to vaccinate people and pass out condoms.

“There’s got to be a transformation of behaviour. We’ve lost our way.”

The bishop doesn’t want to “simply treat the consequences of misbehaviours. You have to go back to causes.”

He says getting a shot against HPV is not “like vaccinating somebody for mumps or measles.”

“This has got a decision attached to it, when you engage in sexual activity. That puts it in a different category.”

Henry insists the idea he’s dictating to Catholic school trustees is “garbage.”

He’s asked what would happen if the board defied him? The bishop brings up a past decision where the Catholic board, after much argy-bargy, finally agreed to stop using casinos for school fundraising. “There were some pressures. I had to kind of squeeze a few arms to get them onside.”

Mary Martin, chair of the Calgary Catholic board, says “nothing is on the horizon to change our mind.”

Liberal leader Raj Sherman, an ER doc who was once health minister Ron Liepert’s right-hand man, says the Tories dropped the ball when the HPV vaccine was introduced back in 2008.

“They didn’t talk to the Catholics. They bulldozed it through,” he says.

At the time, Raj even apologized to Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton.

Henry doesn’t believe the province will lift a finger against him now.

“I don’t think they want that fight,” he smiles.

No doubt.

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